Anti-Donald Trump protesters rally outside the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown hotel, where he spent the night during his first visit to California since taking office, on March 13, 2018, in Los Angeles. Photo: David McNew (Getty Images)

As this country continues its shock-and-awe terror agenda against undocumented immigrants, we get daily examples of how federal agents repeatedly dehumanize these immigrants in the process of what they call “upholding the law.” There is no defendable excuse for some of the stories we are hearing, and this latest example is especially egregious.

A Honduran woman at a detention center in McAllen, Texas, reportedly had her infant daughter—who was breastfeeding and suckling on her nipple at the time—ripped from her arms. When she resisted having her nursing baby snatched from her breast, she said, she was handcuffed, according to CNN. The woman is being detained under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy that calls for anyone caught crossing the border illegally to be referred for federal prosecution.

Miguel A. Nogueras, an assistant federal public defender for the Southern District of Texas in McAllen, told CNN that since the policy was introduced in May, 500 children have been separated from their parents.

Nogueras said that some of the parents who are under arrest have told public defenders that they don’t know what happened to their children. Others claim that they have been told their children are being taken to be bathed or cleaned up, only for them never to see their children again.

“It’s really hard to look in the eye of a mother or father who would plead for you—‘Help me get my child back,’” Nogueras said.

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The U.S. has used this tactic of separating children from their parents before, I think. It sounds super familiar. Oh, wait. I got it now—during slavery. Another time when humans who were not white were considered less than.

It is inhumane and cruel. Even if the argument is that we want to keep the number of undocumented immigrants to a minimum, there is no excuse for disregarding the humanity of them and their children.

Trump’s imagining of undocumented immigrants as “animals” has obviously trickled down to those employed in his administration.

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To be clear, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security, “is responsible for protecting our nation’s borders in order to prevent terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States, while facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel,” according to its website. U.S. Border Patrol is a component of CBP.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, on the other hand, is the largest investigative arm of DHS. ICE “is responsible for identifying and shutting down vulnerabilities in the nation’s border, economic, transportation and infrastructure security.”

As of late, both agencies have been weaponized against people seeking a better way of life.